5 ms·
The Rise of Ritual Features: Why Platforms Are Adding Daily Puzzle Games
- hooverd 1y agoDon't forget to do your LinkedIn dailies! I'm a LinkedIn F2P player; maybe they should offer premium for so many LinkedInGems.
- esafak 1y ago%$#% that $%@%. Put down the computer, go do anything else.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bji9jhff 1y agoHow is this different than daily crossword in newspaper?
- 65 1y agoMaybe it makes sense for NYT or LinkedIn, but why YouTube and Netflix need games seems like a weird product market fit.
- akudha 1y agoMaybe the idea is to throw everything on the wall and see what sticks?
- joot82 1y agoSort of, it's growth at any cost. If you're saturated in organic video views and ran out of ideas how to increase that, maybe you can still glue some mobile gamers to the platform.
- dylan604 1y agoAny game Netflix offers will be better than the original "try to find something to watch in under 2 minutes" game. That one sucks. It takes much longer to find something that I'm interested in, and fits the available time slot I'm willing to sit through.
- jasperry 1y agoI quit Wordle when NYT bought it and started asking me to make an account. But I started again using the app because one of my kids does it and, as the article says, it does give something to talk to people about. So far, you don't have to make an account to use the app. I'll never make an account to be tracked just to play a word game.
- CharlieDigital 1y agoYou are being tracked anyways. If that's a real concern, vibe-code one and self host.
- lenerdenator 1y agoDon't worry. They get quite a lot of info just by you having that app installed on the device.
- cpeterso 1y agoI switched to a free iOS indie game called "Word/off". It's a two-player Wordle clone where you choose a word for your friends to solve. I find stumping my friends or guessing their words more fun than solving the same Wordle word as every other NYT reader. Unfortunately, the App Store says the game is not currently available in my country (the US). In the meantime, there is a web version of the game: https://wordoff.app/ https://wordoff.app/
- jasperry 1y agoThanks, but it looks like the web version doesn't let you do anything unless you sign in with Google or Facebook.
- teekert 1y agoLinkedIn tells me I have so many (ex) co-workers that play these games and I always think about the collective time wasted by all those people and close LinkedIn in disgust. I started monitoring LinkedIn for assignments and networking opportunities. But it's just FaceBook with more AI cringe. I don't know what I hope to find anymore when I open it out of habit.
- morkalork 1y agoI hadn't logged in to LinkedIn for about 4 years until recently and while I'd seen/heard about the insane content that people posted, what surprised me was the stuff like puzzle games. What is this, 2000s era office worker nostalgia for solitaire on the pc?
- rietta 1y agoI still play Solitaire on my computer sometimes ;-p
- righthand 1y agoThe market is ripe for a professional network that relies on invite only web of trust to displace the trash that is linkedin.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoNobody on Linkedin is in a position to criticize how others spend their time.
- kiru_io 1y agoI’ve created a few "daily puzzle" games (e.g., [0] and [1]), and it still surprises me when I meet a random stranger who occasionally plays them. Even now, I can’t quite explain why people keep coming back to the site every day. But maybe for many, it's just a small daily ritual to distract for a few minutes. [0] https://mathlegame.com/ https://mathlegame.com/ [1] https://colorguesser.com/ https://colorguesser.com/
- pkancharla 1y agoThat’s exactly what I found fascinating while researching this — the “why” seems to be part habit loop, part social cue, and part micro-reward.
- celltalk 1y agoI have made few games myself back in the days, still some people play. Most notably https://numbword.com https://numbword.com
- LurkandComment 1y agoThe whole productivity movement is turning out to be a lie: 1) With the internet you can work from home and not have to travel. Time savings. Your company: We want you to commute in everyday and waste time. 2) Use our platform to network productively. Also platform: Waste hours of time playing shitty games. 3) AI will save you time. Your Company: Don't negotiate with us because you are being productive. We will replace you with AI... really some people overseas we call AI.
- reactordev 1y agoAi Shrinivas has soooo many work opportunities… The reality is, no matter how you spin it, labor marketing is labor marketing - intended to trick you into continuing to participate.
- ajkjk 1y agoThey're not exactly lies; being a lie would imply it was claimed to be true in the first place. Whomst among us still believes thinks that a company saying "use our platform to network productively" is an assertion of truth? It's slop (AI-generated or not): filler text that goes where the filler text goes (website copy, CEO's mouths) in order to not upset the mysterious pipeline by which ads make money magically appear. It is not functionally different from "Lorem Ipsum" text.
- vladms 1y agoI think that if you expect that "movements" that promise you something, to deliver at 100%, you are in for many disappointments. Still, it is not like nothing happens: 1) Many people I know in IT work at least partially from home, thing which would have not been possible 20 years ago. 2) I find networking in any circumstances a hit and miss and depending also on luck. Of course people try to attract you with promises, but it was the same for events/conferences/you name it. 3) AI saves many people time. Maybe it will not reduce the time by 10x (and if it does, search for another job), but it's still better than nothing. And it's not something, new for example google translate saves people time since some time already.
- bluGill 1y ago
- v4nn4 1y agoI’ve been watching this space for a while and built my own puzzle with Cursor. Vibe coding speeds things up, but getting the idea, difficulty balance, and UI right is still tricky. Probably depends a lot on the type of puzzle (word-based vs. object placement, etc.). Shameless plug: https://play7fold.com https://play7fold.com
- Telemakhos 1y agoI can't seem to get pieces into the grid on iPad Safari.
- v4nn4 1y agoThanks for the feedback, will look into it. I have too distinct interfaces for mobile and desktop so it could be that you are stuck with the desktop one that uses click (vs touch).
- Telemakhos 1y agoIt works very nicely on Safari on macOS. I think I might have had the desktop interface on iPad.
- OKRainbowKid 1y agoThis is fun! Talking about balance: maybe I got lucky with my guesses, but today's puzzles all seemed pretty easy.
- v4nn4 1y agoThanks! The difficulty is based on the number of steps taken by my solver to solve the puzzle using backtracking and force moves calculations. Humans make better guesses, so it is not just luck ;).
- rstuart4133 1y agoNo blocks can be added at this point: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJL3dhWZvsqQAekySSlsgcMhBbHiZFmz/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJL3dhWZvsqQAekySSlsgcMhBbH... Android 13, Firefox + uBlock Origin.
- lapetitejort 1y agoMy locally owned coffee shop adopted hang.com as a rewards program. They have a daily wordle clone that gives three free guesses. If you don't get it in three, you have to be close to the store to unlock the last two. There's also a bingo board that is filled in when you buy a specific drink or pastry, loot boxes when you earn enough points, tasks, and most recently a candy crush clone to earn 10% off a drink. I'll freely admit it works on me. I have changed my schedule to work from the coffee shop just because I didn't guess the word in three turns. However, if this were attached to a national chain I might be less hesitant to participate. It's kinda funny to me that a local "snooty" coffee shop has adopted the practices of the oppressors.
- fsckboy 1y ago(less likely, more hesitant to participate) but sounds pretty dope, gotta show my coffeeshop
- InfinityByTen 1y agoI would be curious to search up how did puzzles make it into newspapers and magazines back in the day. I have a hunch we are just repeating the same cycle again, only the platform changed :)
- InfinityByTen 1y agoAnd just like that, I decided to ask perplexity about this, since AI is the talk of the town > For example, during wartime or economic uncertainty, puzzles like crosswords were promoted as a way to "escape the woes of the news pages," with editors explicitly noting that readers needed diversions during stressful times. This strategy proved effective: as readers grew to expect puzzles, newspapers benefited from increased sales and more consistent readership, which in turn attracted more advertisers. We are escaping the woes of AI and radicalization, I guess..
- x______________ 1y ago>We are escaping the woes of AI and radicalization, I guess.. You sure? I started a project not 24h ago and was quick to notice advertising of suggestions on multiple LLM chat prompts with things like: "Surprise me" and "Play a quiz"..
- reactordev 1y agoBehavior science would suggest that we all just want to be entertained.
- bezo226 1y agoLove daily games. Hate their commercialization.
- gcanyon 1y agoTo me the canonical example of this is meh.com. They offer one product per day, and each day there is a “meh” button. You log in, click the button, it spins and reveals a custom “meh” face tailored to the thing on offer that day. You can only click it that day —- it changes each day, no historical option —- and on the home page it shows how many days in a row you have clicked it. On your account page it shows all the ones you have clicked. The button does nothing: no discount, no deal, nothing. And yet at the end of Meh’s first year they issued a report and said that something like seventeen people had clicked that button every day of that year. That kind of habit is huge for a site like meh.com, and they accomplished it with a silly button that does nothing but show a custom illustration.
- Kapura 1y agoafter destroying the newspaper, technology companies are now inventing the newspaper.
- calebtonkinson 1y agoNot really meant as habit forming but early on in the AI buzz I thought about a picture based variant of Wordle. Prompt AI model for a very short 2-3 word phrase that would generate an interesting image => Have the model generate 4 candidate images => Have the user guess what the original prompt the model created was based on the images I finally got around to vibe coding it a little while ago and it's kind of fun with a new puzzle being generated each day. https://www.promdle.com/ https://www.promdle.com/
- Michelangelo11 1y ago> Daily puzzles aren’t just engaging—they’re efficient, scalable, and well-aligned with key product and business goals. Pure, grade-A LLMese. Seeing this makes me have to summon all my strength to skim to the end (having given up reading), which I did in this case because I found the subject interesting and hoped there might be something thought-provoking in the article.
- decae 1y agoTotally agree. Would: > Daily puzzles are engaging, efficient, scalable, and well-aligned with key product and business goals. bring it back within the realm of human-generated PR text? Or it's too perfect? I find the perfect number of syllables to be off putting sometimes, it can feel like the uncanny valley of text.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoFarming the village...
- burnt-resistor 1y agoWho but anyone very late to the party and missed the afterparty still uses LinkedIn?
- flet 1y agoShameless self promotion for a daily audio movie quote game me and a buddy have been building :) https://cinequote.net https://cinequote.net